It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

- Edgar Allan Poe

It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.

- Edgar Allan Poe

Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.

- Edgar Allan Poe

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.

- Edgar Allan Poe

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

- Edgar Allan Poe

We should bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation - to make a point - than to further the cause of truth.

Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.

- Benjamin Franklin

When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

- Thomas Jefferson

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

- Bertrand Russell

Art can never exist without Naked Beauty display'd.

- William Blake

I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.

- William Blake

Those who restrain their desires, do so because their desires are weak enough to be restrained.

- William Blake

A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.

From "The Idiot"

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.

From the book, "Alice in Wonderland"

- Lewis Carroll

The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or an art director says.

From "Fight Club"

- Chuck Palahniuk

I ran. I ran until my muscles burned and my veins pumped battery acid. Then I ran some more.

From "Fight Club"

- Chuck Palahniuk

But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there.

From the film, "American Psycho"

- unknown

Don't kill the messenger.

- Sophocles

Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished forever.

- George Orwell

He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.

From the book, "1984"

- George Orwell

Big brother is watching you.

- George Orwell

Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for "non-attachment" is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work.

- George Orwell

If there were no bad people there would be no good lawyers.

- Charles Dickens

What does not kill me, makes me stronger.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes... The advantage of a bad memory is that one can enjoy the same good things for the first time several times.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

With all great deceivers there is a noteworthy occurrence to which they owe their power. In the actual act of deception... they are overcome by belief in themselves. It is this which then speaks so miraculously and compellingly to those who surround them.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

The flame is not so bright to itself as to those on whom it shines: so too the wise man.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

It is not the struggle of opinions that has made history so violent, but rather the struggle of belief in opinions, that is, the struggle of convictions.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions; as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

The more one seeks to rise into height and light, the more vigorously do ones roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep- into evil.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Without music, life would be a mistake.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

The very word "Christianity" is a misunderstanding- in truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Brave, unconcerned, mocking, violent– thus wisdom wants us: she is a woman, and loves only a warrior.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

It is a hopeless endeavour to attract people to a theatre unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in.

- Charles Dickens

He listens well who takes notes.

- Dante

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance -- the idea that anything is possible.

Her lips are red, her looks are free,Her locks are yellow as gold:Her skin is white as leprosy,And she is far liker Death than he;

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are always artists as well.

- Albert Einstein

Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking, and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science. If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, we are engaged in science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively as meaningful, then we are engaged in art.

- Albert Einstein

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.

- Albert Einstein

What can the schools do to defend democracy? Should they preach a specific political doctrine? I believe they should not. If they are able to teach young people to have a critical mind and a socially oriented attitude, they will have done all that is necessary.

- Albert Einstein

It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.

- Albert Einstein

A society's competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic table, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.

- Albert Einstein

Any government is evil if it carries within it the tendency to deteriorate into Tyranny. The danger of such deterioration is more acute in a country in which the government has authority not only over the armed forces but also over every channel of education and information...

- Albert Einstein

Taken on the whole, I would believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit...not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in what we believe is evil.

- Albert Einstein

Most countries are static, and all they need to do is keep having babies. But America's like this big old clanking smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight.

- Neal Stephenson

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.

- Hunter S. Thompson

Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

- Ernest Hemingway

It's funny how when you're up so late at night for so long your mind can get into these creative places, the kind of creative places that come to you when you're halfway between asleep and awake.

- Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple

I deserted the world and sought solitude because I became tired of rendering courtesy to those multitudes who believe that humility is a sort of weakness, and mercy a kind of cowardice, and snobbery a form of strength.

- Kahlil Gibran

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

- Kahlil Gibran

Shall I coo like a pigeon to please you,Or shall I roar like a lion to please myself?

- Kahlil Gibran

When love beckons to you, follow him,Though his ways are hard and steep.And when his wings enfold you yield to him,Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

- Kahlil Gibran

The greatest thing you will ever learn,is just to love and be loved in return.

- Eden Ahbez

You may not be her first, her last, or her only. she loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She's not perfect - you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break - her heart. So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there.

- Bob Marley

Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment.

- Ansel Adams

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water...

- Jack Kerouac

Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.

- Jack Kerouac

I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

- Jack Kerouac

There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be.

- Norman Mailer

Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.

- Norman Mailer

Fascism is more of a natural state than democracy. To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.

- Norman Mailer

As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity... of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

- Oscar Wilde

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

- Oscar Wilde

That very concentration of vision and intensity of purpose which is the characteristic of the artistic temperament is in itself a mode of limitation. To those who are preoccupied with the beauty of form nothing else seems of much importance.

From "Pen, Pencil, and Poison"

- Oscar Wilde

To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

From "De Profundis"

- Oscar Wilde

Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realize what it has done. When the man’s punishment is over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins.

From "De Profundis"

- Oscar Wilde

Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask.

From "De Profundis"

- Oscar Wilde

Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow.

From "De Profundis"

- Oscar Wilde

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

From "De Profundis"

- Oscar Wilde

Every single work of art is the fulfillment of a prophecy; for every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image.

From "De Profundis"

- Oscar Wilde

A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it.

From "De Profundis"

- Oscar Wilde

My shoe is offMy foot is cold.I have a birdI like to hold.My hat is old.My teeth are gold.And now my story is all told.